Exodus to ICL

Oh boy, this makes things really interesting:

Six leading Bangladesh players - Habibul Bashar, Aftab Ahmed, Shahriar Nafees, Farhad Reza, Dhiman Ghosh and Mosharraf Hossain - have informed the Bangladesh Cricket Board they intend to retire from international and domestic cricket. The news, announced by the BCB, follows a report in the Bangladesh daily Prothom Alo which said 14 players, including the six mentioned above, were set to join the Indian Cricket League. [LINK]

I really don't blame them. They see so many players making a lot of money and enjoying themselves while playing in the IPL. So why should they be left out? Next best thing: the ICL.

Until the ICC gets its act together and recognizes the ICL as a legitimate league, there are going to be more defections. These defections will hurt the ICC a lot since they have invested so much into Bangladesh as a model developing country. As for the Bangladesh supporters, I think they may enjoy seeing a more competitive Dhaka Warriors team rather than watching their national team get consistently outclassed.

The ICC really needs to figure things out. National commitment is in danger of being completely sidelined in favor of league cricket. If that's what the market demands, then that's what's going to happen. But the ICC's stupidity is a huge contributor to the decreasing interest in national cricket as well.

I have stated before that it's a good time to set up a competing official cricket board. And I hope it happens. ICL should actually start holding ODIs and Tests as well.

Competition is good; someone should challenge the ICC's stranglehold.

Carry For...What?

I just realized that India and Sri Lanka got 2 carry-forward points each from the group stage. My simple reaction was...WTF??? Why???

CF points are normally used in lieu of playing the same team again in the next stage. But in this tournament, each team plays each other again anyway. What were the organizers smoking when they put the rules together???

So thanks to the pointless CF points, Sri Lanka has to beat India for Pakistan to have a chance (assuming Pakistan beat Bangladesh). Without CF, even if India beat Sri Lanka, it would come down to NRR between Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka (again, assuming Pakistan beat Bangladesh).

Last time it was some obscure bonus point that screwed Pakistan. This time it very well could be CF points.

However, if you do look at it from the angle that CF points were carried forward and the relevant teams didn't play each other again, then you'd have the following situation after today's match:

SL: 4
Ind: 2
Pak: 0
Ban: 0

So in that way, SL would have to beat India anyway for Pakistan to have a chance.

Regardless, I think the best would be to have everyone play each other as happened, but no CF points. Combining the two makes no sense.

grumble...mumble...